As George introduced the show, Barbara and Leila met in the Flying Jenny's hangar. Both were dressed like male pilots in trousers, leather jackets, caps and goggles.
Barbara flipped a nickel and it came up heads again. Leila went to the other hangar and climbed into the cockpit of the Piper Cub that had been painted white with green stripes on the side. Barbara again got into the cockpit of the Jenny which had been painted yellow and red.
Both pilots their plane onto the flying field and before lifting off the airstrip, waved to the crowd and then to each other. Barbara kissed a finger to the Pegasus pinned over her heart on her flying jacket. She took her plane into the air first, as George had choreographed, starting the show.
Not all who watched from below with their mouths open and their hearts in them had seen an air show before. Almost none had seen a Flying Circus, both of which fell under the general category of aerobatics. The term was most often used for stunt-flying, putting an airplane into spins or turning it upside down for the excitement of it.
The sport, almost as old as flying itself, originated in 1913 when a Russian pilot, Pyotr Nesterov, became the first to do a loop-de-loop in his French Nieuport monoplane. Later that year, people flocked to watch the Frenchman, C. A. Pegoud, fly his 50 horsepower Gnome Bleriot in aerobatic maneuvers. He was soon followed by an American air daredevil, Lincoln Beachey, who introduced the sport in the United States. Military pilots flying in World War I perfected nearly every aerobatic maneuver with which barnstormers thrilled crowds afterward.
Barbara and Leila were both soon in the sky above the airport, putting the two relic planes through loops, then slow rolls, barrel rolls, nose dives, and then snap rolls which were horizontal spins.
The crowd below on bleachers gasped as George announced: "Now see the daredevil pilot as he takes his Piper Cub into a hammerhead or stall-turn."
Edna laughed every time George called the pilots men.
"And now watch as the other pilot takes his Jenny into a sideways reversal of direction from a vertical climb."
After the crowd cheered Barbara's successful stunt, George asked that all eyes turn to the Piper Cub. His wife took the plane into a tailslide or backwards recovery from a steep climb.
As the show progressed, more people came who heard the roar of the planes and saw them in the air. They had been out on a Sunday afternoon pleasure ride when they began racing for the airport at Mohave.